Mundane driving achievement

Some years ago, our family was driving from Chicago to Dallas. Just after passing through Little Rock, we encountered a traffic backup. The highway was wet because of a light rain and a truck had jackknifed across both west bound lanes.

After a short time, the other occupants of our car were getting antsy, and we noticed that some cars were driving on the shoulder. We too pulled over and saw that there was an exit from the highway just ahead, past the truck. Some cars were simply exiting, but others, who wanted to stay on the highway, were trying to drive from the exit ramp over to the nearby loop of the cloverleaf and get back on the highway past the jackknifed truck.

Between the two sections of road was a depressed section of wet grass. We saw that many cars were stuck in this stretch of grass - they had tried to go directly from one side to the other and couldn't get up the incline because of the wet and slippery conditions.

My achievement was to continue further up the exit ramp, then to cross the chasm by driving at an angle instead of directly across. We made it up the far incline and were able to get back on the highway. Because no cars could get by on the highway due to the truck - and so many were having problems negotiating the gap we had driven successfully across - the highway was nearly empty for many miles as we drove on to Dallas.

And after driving some miles like this a small truck came up behind us. As it passed directly beside us the driver slowed slightly to match our speed. I looked over and saw the driver giving us a most enthusiastic thumbs up!